


No Beat No Melody

by ReluctantRavenclaw



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Blow us all away, Canonical Character Death, Dear Theodosia Emotions, Duelling, Family, Hamilton Family - Freeform, Hamilton Song Lyrics, Historical and Musical Accuracies, Hurt No Comfort, Philip Deserves Better, References to the Reynolds Pamphlet, The Hamilton Children, Too many Hamilton references, Very Slight Philip/Theodosia, forgiveness (can you imagine), stay alive reprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReluctantRavenclaw/pseuds/ReluctantRavenclaw
Summary: His name is Philip.Philip has always been a poet, even before he knew what that word was or what it meant. Before that, he thought that everyone made up rhymes on the spot, and scribbled down the lines that popped into their heads. But no, Mother says they don’t.Life, death, love, legacy and forgiveness seen through a young poet's eyes.





	

His name is Philip. 

Philip has always been a poet, even before he knew what that word was or what it meant. Before that, he thought that everyone made up rhymes on the spot, and scribbled down the lines that popped into their heads. But no, Mother says they don’t.

“You’re special, Pip,” she beams even as another piano lesson is interrupted by an impromptu poetry session instead. “So, so talented, my boy.”

Mother doesn’t mind that he always changes the scale she so patiently attempts to teach him, or that he makes up his own words to her songs. As long as Philip is happy, then so is she. And Philip is never happier than when he has a quill and a fresh sheet of paper, and the words are coming just as he intends them to. Mother says that she sees his father in him more and more every day, and there’s a strange, faraway look in her eye as she speaks.

Philip’s quill is rarely out of his hand, though he can compose long and detailed verses in his head and then repeat them verbatim hours and even days later. Every morning, he recites a few lines over breakfast because his little sister, Angie, asks him to and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. It makes her laugh, which makes him smile, and so the tradition continues. When the little brothers he so longs for arrives, and each is placed into his waiting arms in turn, he makes up poems for them too. 

Every visitor to the house is regaled with a poem of Philip’s own composition. Maybe only a handful of them are truly good, most are merely passable and a few are especially uninspired and insensitive, even for a boy as young as he. One such ill-conceived piece is born after his mother’s sister takes an unfortunate tumble on the icy drive one winter’s afternoon. Mother sternly explains that, under no circumstances, is Poor Aunt Peg has hurt her leg, to be repeated, though Aunt Peggy herself just smiles like it doesn’t matter. Aunt Angelica listens patiently to each poem on her visits home from England and sometimes, Ma even lets him add a couple of his own lines onto the end of her letters. Aunt Angelica writes back, full of praise for her nephew’s poetic talents, and includes long lists of poets that Philip reminds her of, and that he should read about. Philip doesn’t know who any of these older, renowned poets are, but all he knows is that he is a poet, and he will keep writing, because that is what poets do. 

Ma and Angie are forever his greatest and most patient audience. They discover quickly that they make the best team if Angie plays the piano and Philip accompanies her with a song. Mother unfailingly wanders into the room, the newest child cradled in her arms, and she listens. The boys are too young to fully understand, but they enjoy it, or seem to at least, and the baby is lulled off to sleep and Ma smiles and smiles, like she’s never heard anything so wonderful. Perhaps she is simply humoring them, but Philip doesn’t think so. He always knows that his mother is proud of him and probably always will be. Certainly he doesn’t foresee any opportunity not to maintain his mother’s pride in him.  


Philip writes endless poems for his father, because Pa reads and writes more than anyone else Philip knows and if anyone can appreciate good writing, then it will be him. Pa isn’t often home until late in the evenings when it’s much too late to play the piano and recite poems. Philip writes them down instead so Pa can read them whenever he has the time. Philip hopes his father is proud of him, and he likes to think that he is. He frequently thinks of the afternoon of his ninth birthday, and when he does, Philip can’t help but smile as he remembers how his father’s weary face split into a wide grin. He remembers reciting the birthday poem at the top of the lungs, remembers Pa scooping him up into his arms and spinning him round like he wasn’t nine years old and therefore much too old for such undignified things. 

Sometimes, when he is supposed to be asleep in bed, Philip creeps down the hall to where candlelight still spills out from beneath the door of his father’s study. The rest of the family have been asleep for hours, Ma looks awfully small in that big bed all by herself when Philip passes her room, but still Pa works on. The scratching of his quill as he fills sheet after sheet with his small, cramped script is hard to miss. Philip tries to match his father word for word, but knows he will never be able to catch up. They are different sorts of writers anyway, Philip contents himself, and Father is not a poet. He once heard his mother saying that Pa used to write her the most extraordinary letters back when they were young and courting. Mother fell in love with Father because of these letters, Philip surmises, and he wonders if he’ll ever write such letters to a sweetheart when he is old. Pa doesn’t need to write letters to Ma anymore because they’re not young and courting, and they’re usually together in the same house anyway.

Sometime and somewhere between boarding school and King’s College is when things start to change, and not in a particularly good way either. Philip finds himself writing and writing more and more these days because there’s very little else he can do anymore. He still writes Angie her breakfast poem every morning, because there’s precious little else to smile at these days. He still tells the little ones stories because even if they’re too young to grasp the situation, they can’t fail to realize that something isn’t quite right. Philip wishes, more than anything else in the world, that he could make his mother smile like he used to be able to. That was what being a poet was all about, he now realizes, and he regrets that this ability has been cruelly taken from him. He doesn’t waver in his efforts, though, and she mightn’t smile but she doesn’t always cry either. She takes Philip in her arms like he’s still a little boy and kisses his forehead and strokes his hair and wonders aloud what she’d ever do without him.

Philip continues to write to his father and he writes until his hand cramps and he uses up bottles and bottles of ink and wears his best quill out. He stays up all night sometimes and wonders if his father still sits awake, working all night in his office across town. He misses the sound of the scratching quill down the hall, and wishes things could be the way they once were. When Philip was little and he wrote for his father, it was always with the goal of impressing Pa and wanting to make him proud. He would write in his very neatest script, paying careful attention to the spelling, making sure the meter of each poem was just right, and that he didn’t smudge or blot the ink. Now he takes no such care and writes things that Alexander Hamilton wouldn’t be proud to read at all. He writes long and rambling letters condemning his father for what he’s done, he describes his mother’s tears when she thinks nobody can hear her, he asks what this Reynolds woman had to offer, he wonders why he and his sister and his brothers and his mother weren’t enough. What would be enough? Sometimes, when Ma is particularly sad and Philip doesn’t know what else he can do, he begs his father to come home and make things right again.  


Father doesn’t write back, nor does he ruffle Philip’s hair or pick him up or offer invaluable words of encouragement or clever ideas about what to write next, like he used to. Philip’s father may be the most outspoken and opinionated man in all of America, but even he cannot reply to letters that aren’t sent. Everyday Philip writes his letters and everyday he rips the letters up and shoves the crumpled remains into the fireplace, because they may be addressed to his father but really they are just for his own eyes. When all is said and all is done, Philip still loves his father, loves him dearly with all his heart, and part of him doesn’t want his beloved father to know the terrible things his eldest son has written about him. So the letters and poems burn, like they’d never been written at all.

In the summer before his final year at King’s, Philip has too many thoughts that he doesn’t know what to do with, so he does what he always does best. He writes, and then he writes some more, but sometimes he just needs to get away from the house for a little while. The house, somehow, feels too big and yet suffocating at the same time. Sometimes his father’s empty study and his mother’s sad eyes are too much to bear when he doesn’t know what he can do to make things better. On the very worst days, Philip wakes early after a restless night of writing; he rises before the sun, his head swimming with thoughts, and never feels more like his father. It’s not an entirely comforting or welcome thought, so he does very best to push it away. He leaves the house before it’s properly light, when it’s still dark outside, and he walks. He walks for miles upon miles just to try and clear his troubled, overcrowded mind. He purposefully avoids the city if he can help it, because there are crowds there, even at this early hour of the morning. There was a time when Philip loved nothing more than being the center of attention in a large crowd. But now crowds lead to lingering stares and carrying whispers and pointed looks. Enough time has passed that his father’s sordid private life isn’t the sole news story on everybody’s minds anymore, but Philip looks enough like his father that people are quickly reminded. So he walks the other way instead, away from the gossiping masses. Manhattan is no longer the greatest city in the world. Maybe it never was.

Philip likes it uptown, because it’s quiet enough that he can try and put his thoughts in order, and he can walk for hours uninterrupted. He isn’t always alone. More often than not, he is not the only child awake at the crack of dawn, despite the ungodly hour. His little brothers are growing up splendidly, but they’re solemn and sad in ways that Philip never was when he was young. It pains him like a physical wound to see Alexander and James and John so serious and somber when they should be enjoying the most carefree stage of their little lives. So he takes his brothers with him, and tries not to let it bother him to see how their faces light up when he takes their hands and leads them from the house. On occasion he takes his littlest brother and sister with him, because William and Elizabeth are too young to understand why Mama always looks so weary and why Papa is rarely home. If he can make their dear little faces break into smiles, even just for a while, then he is doing his job and he is doing it right.

Philip can sometimes persuade his mother to take a short walk with him; she clings tightly to his arm and without either of them saying it, he knows to avoid his father’s office in town. Ma smiles wanly and assures him that she’s fine and kisses his forehead when he takes her home again. Philip wishes that his father could accompany him on one of these walks. It might give them a chance to talk and work at clearing the air. But Father stays holed up in his office and Philip walks in the other direction and tries to hold his head up high.

Mostly, however, it is Angie who wakes early and it is Angie who comes along with Philip on his excursions uptown. In this, as in all things, it is the two of them against the world. Some mornings they walk in companionable silence, other mornings they talk a mile a minute about anything and everything under the sun. Angie still asks Philip for poems and he obliges. He makes up amusing little rhymes about the people they pass in the streets, and discretely steers her away from those who have nothing good to say to two Hamilton children. He tells Angie that she ought to take up the piano again because the instrument is just gathering dust and God knows their house could do with some music and laughter again. Angie just smiles a little sadly and promises that she will, definitely one day soon, and she looks extraordinarily like their mother when she says it.  
It’s on one such walk that Philip and Angie encounter a young lady out walking with her father a few paces behind her to give her some semblance of independence, whilst still retaining propriety. Angie, who knows such things, informs him in a whisper that this is Miss Theodosia Burr, so the man trailing behind her must be Father’s political adversary. Well, one of them at least; he is not particularly known for making a lot of friends at the moment.

It is Angie who does the introductions; Angie, Philip now understands, who must be so hungry for company and conversation outside of him and their strange, unsettled household. She is surprisingly forward, extending a hand for the slightly startled Miss Burr to shake, and introduces herself. She doesn’t falter on the Hamilton and Philip is proud of her. After their name has been dragged through the mud and all that followed, his little sister is not ashamed of who they are. She is a Hamilton with pride.

He sees Theodosia’s eyes widen at the name and he wonders if it means to her what Burr means to him. He wonders what stories she’s heard about his father and just how many of them are true. Theodosia looks at him, clearly expecting an introduction and Philip, all of a sudden, cannot find the words. For perhaps the very first time in his life, Philip the poet is at a complete loss for words. Angie laughs, an honest to God, teasing laugh that he hasn’t heard in what feels like a lifetime. It falls to her to introduce her suddenly hapless, helpless older brother.

“His name is Philip,” and it seems she cannot help herself but add, “he is a poet.”

Theodosia Burr smiles, a flash of pearly teeth against startlingly pink lips, and Philip feels something inside him come undone at the simple action. “A poet?” Theodosia repeats, in the same teasing tone as Angie. “It seems only right, sir, that you let me hear what you’ve got to say.”

And Philip wants to, really he does, and there are a million things he hasn’t said, and yet not one word falls from his lips. Something about this young lady, and he doesn’t quite know what that thing is, has completely stopped him dead in his tracks. Suddenly, from out of the clear blue sky, he understands how his father could have written such long and gushing letters to his mother when they were young. Or at least he would, if he could summon up one single word to say to the young lady standing before him. He thinks he should be complimenting her beauty; her dark, dark hair and dark, dark eyes, those pearly teeth and her pink lips, how her hair is painstakingly coiled and arranged. And yet, nothing. Of all the hundreds upon hundreds of poems that Philip has composed in his admittedly rather short life, he can’t remember one small, inconsequential line to repeat to this girl. Nor can he think up something new or even vaguely original to say to her. Philip, the poet, who has written extensively on every single person, thing and event he’s ever encountered, is experiencing the most severe case of writer’s block he’s certain it’s possible for a person to feel. 

So there he stands, silent as the grave, while Angie rolls her eyes so hard he’s sure it must hurt, and Theodosia’s smile, impossibly, widens. “Some poet you are,” she comments, but there is no malice to her words, just a gentle mocking that is no less than what Philip deserves at the moment. It doesn’t take long for Theodosia’s father to catch up to her; the source of so much of his father’s vexation made real and material in front of them.

“Mr Burr,” Philip voices at last, sounding unnaturally high and most unlike himself, even to his own ears. “Sir,” he adds, after a nudge in the side from Angie reminds him of his manners.

“Master Hamilton,” Mr Burr’s voice is slow and measured, like he thinks a great deal before carefully selecting each individual word. He couldn’t sound more different from Father; whose fast speech is rivaled only by the remarkable speed of his brain. “Miss Hamilton,” he continues, politely inclining his head in Angie’s direction, who obliges with a demure curtsy that probably wasn’t entirely necessary. “Come, Theodosia, we must be on our way,” he directs to his daughter, laying a protective hand on her shoulder and slowly, deliberately, leading her in the opposite direction. “Give my regards to your mother and father,” Mr Burr adds before they are out of earshot. Theodosia turns around just in time to give them, him, one last smile before she is gone.

Angie clutches at Philip’s arm and laughs the whole way home. “Father always says there’s nothing like summer in the city,” she teases, wiping mirthful tears out of her eyes. It’s the first time in God knows how long that Philip has heard his sister talk about Father in anything but tones of deepest sadness. It’s that which he elects to focus on, and not the knots his stomach is currently tying itself into over Miss Theodosia Burr.

Such is the nature of time that summer comes to an end and Philip feels guilty when he must leave again for his final year of education. The entire family, his father included, gather to see him off. The little ones cling to his legs and cry but Philip pats them on the head with a whispered promise that he’ll be back before they know he’s gone. Alex surprises him with the firmness and maturity of his handshake and leans in close so that Philip alone can hear his brother’s solemn promise to take care of things in his absence. Angie cries again, those tears that Philip has worked so hard to get rid of, and it pains him to think that he is the cause of his beloved sister’s anguish. Mother and Father stand a little way apart; Ma trying to placate an upset William and Pa with one arm around James and the other round John. The picture they present is the most overwhelmingly hopeful that Philip has seen in as many months, possibly even years. For the first time in a very long time, he gets the impression that maybe, just maybe, things are going to turn out alright for his family, that the worst is behind them now. He wishes he didn’t have to leave just as things are beginning to fall into place again. 

Before he goes, Pa firmly clasps his shoulder in a reassuring grip and then pulls him in for a somewhat uncharacteristic embrace. He gives Philip the same advice he always does; “Take care. Be smart. Make me proud, son.” And Philip promises, and knows, that he will follow his father’s instructions to the letter. Ma holds him for so long that the carriage driver begins to grow impatient. He feels her tears forming a damp patch of his shoulder and her pats her on the back a little uncertainly, wishing he knew what to do for her. 

“Don’t cry, please, Ma,” he says gently, beginning to ease himself out of her grasp. He repeats his earlier words to the little ones. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone, and I’ll write as often as I can.”

He is rewarded with a watery smile from his mother that is worth more than anyone else could ever understand. “I know you will,” she says quietly, giving his hand one last squeeze. “Your name is Philip; you are a poet.” She repeats the old line that has now become a treasured family joke as well as a memory. It is good to hear Ma joking again, even if her dark eyes are shining with as yet unshod tears. 

It feels curiously final, climbing into the carriage that will bring him back to school. He watches his family furiously wave before they disappear from view, and can’t help but wonder if they know something he doesn’t. Already he misses them, and he has barely exited the drive.

God, he can’t wait to see them again. 

The academic year passes as it always does. Philip reads endless books and engages in intelligent conversations and is on course to graduate at the top of his class. He writes long letters home in the midst of everything else he has to do and somehow finds time for everything. He is his father’s son after all. He keeps his father well informed of his academic pursuits; Pa has always had an exceptionally keen interest in his education. His replies come practically instantaneously and Philip’s ability to read between the lines seems to ease the worry he’s been carrying around with him for the longest time. Pa sends his usual recommendations of books Philip ought to read and his longwinded opinions of Philip’s studies, but there are other things there too, which come as much more of a comfort. Throwaway lines here and there, seemingly innocent observations, suggest that his father is spending a lot more time in the family home as of late. Certainly Ma’s letters have taken on a sunnier tone as she proudly informs him of how his little brothers are flourishing, and of how Elizabeth is growing up so quickly. Philip dutifully writes to his mother; he writes religiously, though it is never a chore, to tell her about his studies and to reassure her anxious motherly concerns. Yes, he is eating enough and getting enough sleep, and no he doesn’t have a young lady friend, and yes, of course he is staying out of trouble and minding his manners.

Angie writes almost every day, chatty little letters that exactly match her conversational style. Philip collects up all the poems he writes and sends her a little bundle each week so that she always has something to read over breakfast. She receives an awful lot of poems born from Philip’s frustration at the ever increasing difficulty of his studies, but she only jokingly complains. He writes to his brothers and adds little notes for Elizabeth with the hope that someone will read them aloud to her so she won’t forget her big brother while he’s away.

So many times, as he sits at his desk with his candle burning brightly and his favorite quill in hand, Philip begins a letter to Theodosia Burr. He recalls their meeting, if it even can be called as such, with a fierce embarrassment that he just can’t get rid of. He vows to redeem himself, to prove his worth as poet and indeed as a young man, but still the words won’t come. He never gets any further than the arbitrary Dear Theodosia, before giving up in frustration and throwing his failed attempts in the fireplace where they so clearly belong. He wonders why he can’t get this young lady, whom he’s never actually spoken a word to or spent more than a brief moment in her company, out of his mind. He wonders why he can’t put pen to paper and write the girl a poem when that is his greatest joy and passion in life. Most of the fellows around college write letters to their sweethearts back home, sickeningly sentimental love poems copied straight from books, or bawdy letters full of crude references and suggestions. In a rare moment of clarity where the young lady is concerned, Philip knows that neither type is at all suitable for Miss Theodosia Burr.

The news comes in one of Angie’s letters; she does seem to know everybody and everything and likes to keep him abreast of all she hears. It still comes as a shock when she relays the fact that a Mr Joseph Alston has announced his engagement to the daughter of one of father’s greatest rivals. Angie has added this information as a postscript at the bottom of her letter, and it comes after a great deal of crossing out and blotted ink. He can picture his sister deliberating whether she ought to share this news, and changing her mind several times before sending her letter. Philip has no right in the world to feel anything about this matter. He is nothing to Theodosia Burr and he doubts whether she even remembers him and Angie and their brief introduction all those months before. Why should she think lingering thoughts of a boy who couldn’t string two words together in her presence when she is engaged to another, no doubt worthier, man?

In his next letter home, Philip briefly acknowledges Miss Burr’s engagement and writes that he wishes the couple all the very best before swiftly moving onto another, safer, topic. Life goes on, as surely it must, and Philip strives to drive the lady from his mind. Certainly he never attempts another letter to her; she will soon be married to this Alston fellow and he has absolutely no business pursuing her any further. Recent events close to home have taught Philip the very painful lesson against such illicit activities.  
So Philip writes, and he studies hard, and he writes a great deal more and slowly, but surely, he begins to remove all traces of her from his thoughts. He works hard with a furious zeal and ethic that would make even his father stand back and marvel a little, and he graduates with the very highest marks of all his peers. As he packs up his dormitory room for the last time, reveling in his new identity as the latest graduate of King’s College, Philip feels better than he has done in a very long time. He has a great big future stretching out ahead of him, as wide and expansive as the horizon itself, and all the time in the world to figure out what to do with it. He has brothers and sisters waiting for him back at home who can’t wait to see him again. He has a mother whom he loves to the ends of the earth, and a father whom he respects and admires, in spite of everything, with all that he has. The sun is shining and Philip is smiling on the day that he leaves college as a graduate and prepares to start the rest of his life. It has been a very long time coming but at long last, it finally feels like things are going right. 

That is until George Eacker opens his mouth and everything comes crashing and burning to the ground again. 

From the moment Eacker makes his remarks, those pointed, snide remarks aimed straight at his father, time begins to move at an alarming pace and continues to pick up speed as though to remind Philip that there is no going back now. It is a cruel but unavoidable reminder that he has made his bed, as it were, and now he must lie in it. Philip has never engaged in a duel before, nor any altercation of any kind, and yet he is the one challenging the outspoken Mr Eacker. It isn’t the intention he necessarily set out with, yet the challenge is posed practically without his volition, and he is powerless to halt it in any way. This is about so much more than an unsavory individual spitting unkind lies about his father; this very quickly becomes a matter of honor and legacy and the defamation of his father’s character. Philip is entirely his father’s son, never one to back away from a challenge, especially where these most important issues are concerned.

Pure, unadulterated adrenaline is what fuels his interaction with Eacker and he leaves the theater, shaking with the excitement of it all. It isn’t until he is walking up the drive home that the reality of the situation crashes over him like an especially wild wave upon the shore. The sheer force of it all makes his legs feel weak and almost brings him falling to his knees. A duel; a duel with pistols and the very real possibility of death. Death. All consuming, all powerful death lurking just out of sight but close in a way that it has never been before. Philip has never considered his own mortality; he’s always been much more focused on life and experiencing everything it throws his way. He knows that he did contract a serious illness in his childhood and that his father nursed him day and night until the threat finally passed. He cannot remember the hazy, feverish days when he wasn’t expected to survive, but on the rare occasions his father ever speaks of it, it is in a curt tone that signals the end of discussion. And yet here Philip is, practically sending Death an invitation by getting himself involved in a duel. 

He bursts through the front door, out of breath and almost stumbling over his own feet as he makes a beeline for his father’s study upstairs. He can hear his mother singing to herself in the kitchen. Her clear, pure voice is the most beautiful sound in the world, especially since he hasn’t heard her sing in so very long. It instantly transports him back to a time when things were simple and innocent and all he wants to do is play the piano and sing with his Mama again. He wants her to help him and set things right. But Philip is not a child anymore and he cannot bring himself to involve his poor, long suffering mother in this dreadful business. So he prays Ma hasn’t heard him come in and he quietly, but urgently, hurries up the stairs to find his father. 

Father’s study is exactly how Philip pictured it, and it occurs to him that he’s never actually set foot inside. All those years in his childhood, he stood at the door but never ventured further. The handsome mahogany desk is completely hidden beneath piles and piles of parchment, hastily opened letters, empty ink bottles and pamphlets, the majority of which have probably been written by his father. If there is any kind of order or system, then it is apparent only to his father, which is likely how he likes it best. The man himself sits in the middle of this hurricane, perfectly at ease and at home in his chaotic surroundings. He looks up, mildly surprised at receiving an uninvited visitor, but his face creases into a smile, albeit a slightly confused one, when he sees who it is. 

“Philip!” he greets his eldest child with a genial smile. “To what do I owe-”

But Philip doesn’t have time, he’s running out of time and his time’s up, so his words come tumbling out, indistinct and incoherent, drowning out his father’s commands to slow down, take a deep breath, son, tell me what has happened. So he does. He recounts the vile Eacker’s words and the duel Philip has now found himself entangled in. Father listens, uncharacteristically quiet, his expression unusually grave which sends a wholly unwanted chill down Philip’s spine. He turns and lifts two guns previously mounted on the wall and stares at them for a long, lingering moment before placing them, a little reluctantly it seems, into Philip’s waiting hands. He recoils a little, and his hands give an involuntary tremble because they’re heavier than he anticipated and the unfamiliar metal is unpleasantly cold. Philip doesn’t know how to fire a gun, but he won’t have to, Father is saying. He won’t fire his father’s gun, he will send no deadly bullet in Eacker’s direction, he will aim for the sky, like his parents have always encouraged him to do. Philip’s honor will be intact, his father’s name will be maintained, he will not be a murderer.

“Philip, your mother can’t take another heartbreak.”

It occurs to Philip that this isn’t what his mother had in mind when she told him always to aim for the sky. Ma is the strongest person he knows, without a doubt, even though she’s had the grave misfortune to have had to deal with so much. Her husband betraying their most sacred wedding vows, then publishing the sordid details for the whole world to pore over and laugh about. Her beloved younger sister succumbing to a long illness just a few months ago. Losing a little baby that never even got the chance to be born. She shouldn’t have to take another heartbreak; she deserves a much better life than she has been granted thus far. So Philip will point his gun skywards. Her son will not be a murderer. Her son will not be murdered, because Eacker will follow suit. Father says so.

“Come back home when you’re done. Take my guns. Be smart. Make me proud, son.”

And Philip will. All he has ever wanted to do is make his parents proud. They are Hamiltons with pride. He pauses before leaving his father’s study because Pa suddenly grasps his shoulder almost uncomfortably tight, like he doesn’t want to let Philip go. For a man with such a way with words, Pa isn’t able to conjure up a sentence. So many unspoken words hang in the balance between them just out of reach, but Philip is the one to finally break the connection. If they start to speak, if they say all the things that need to be said, then they’ll never draw the line and Philip will never leave the safe, claustrophobic confines of the study. And he must leave. 

Philip stops before he leaves the house and takes one last glance back in the direction of the kitchen, where the sweet sounds of his mother’s singing continues to float out to him. He cannot say goodbye to her, all he wants to say must wait until he returns home this evening. He must ignore the sounds of the sounds of the little ones playing out back, and his brothers hard at their studies. He thinks it is a fortunate thing that Angie has chosen today to go visiting a friend. If she were here, and if she knew what he was about to do, he’d never be able to leave her. And yet if he doesn’t leave now, Eacker will be under the impression that he is forgoing the meeting and all will have been for nothing.  
Time seems to move curiously fast, even if Philip wishes he could heed his father’s words and just slow down. He meets his second, Richard Price, on the way to the boats. Price is a decent friend, a companionable roommate from college and a sturdy, reliable second who has done everything in his power to negotiate a peace. Philip allows himself a very brief smile as he considers who he would really choose as his second. He imagines bringing Angie along because there’s nobody he trusts more. It is entirely inappropriate, however, to bring a young lady to the dueling ground, and he would never ever want to upset or frighten his little sister, as bringing her along surely would. Price it must be, and Angie must never know, at least not until enough time has passed that they can laugh about it later.

Philip is silent on the voyage across the Hudson. Price keeps up an unrelenting stream of conversation, talking about the inanest points presumably to keep his mind off what is to come in the very near future. The doctor deliberately looks in the other direction, his gaze fixed firmly on New York City even as they sail away from it. If he doesn’t look at the young men, then he has the prerogative to deny that anything ever happened. Philip may be outwardly silent but his mind is racing a mile a minute. He considers all that has led up to this moment, and all that will come after it. He itches to write it all down, so that the thoughts may leave his head and he can focus on the matter at hand. 

The boat bumps against the shore, alerting Philip to the fact that he is here, this is real and this is happening. He accepts the hand, Price’s presumably, that helps him disembark, because all the feeling has gone from his legs again and he thinks he would fall otherwise. He follows the grim procession up towards the dueling ground, still tightly clutching his father’s guns even as his hands shake and his body threatens to betray him. Philip looks across at Eacker, who looks completely unperturbed and even a little bored by the proceedings. Like he hasn’t just been handed a pistol, like he mightn’t just be about to kill someone or be killed himself. 

Philip must look away because the sight of Eacker thoroughly unnerves him and he feels a hair’s breadth away from falling into a dead faint. The grisly order of procedure begins and in one last ditch effort to calm himself and maintain a dignified composure, he thinks about the poem he might write to Angie today. It occurs to him now that he didn’t write one today in all the excitement and upset of what he had to do. "My name is Philip; I am a poet. And I’m a little nervous but I can’t show it." Angie probably wouldn’t appreciate that particular poetic effort. "I’m sorry, I’m a Hamilton with pride. You talk about my father; I cannot let that slide." That’s the truth of the matter. 

Philip feels strangely detached from his body, like he is going through the motions with only the slightest input from his brain. He watches like the whole ordeal is happening to some other poor wretch, like he is not the one loading his gun. He is not the one conferring with his men. He is not the one being put through his paces. He is not the one counting to ten.

But he is. He is, he is, he is.

Number one. Philip can’t help but think of his father when the first count comes. His overwhelmingly intelligent, confident, outspoken, arrogant father. His father who still reads every scrap of paper Philip gives him and takes them seriously, despite the million other more important things he has to do. His father who came from nothing and lost everything and works so hard to give Philip the entire world. Pa is the reason he is stands here now, shivering from the cold and the nerves. Pa has done so much for this nation he loves with all his heart, and yet the ungrateful masses continue to drag his noble name through the mud. Not this time. Philip will make sure of that. 

Number two. His thoughts turn irrevocably to his mother; his kind, selfless, beautiful mother whom he can’t bear to think about because she is better, so much better, than this. She deserves to be a thousand miles away from a muddy dueling ground in Weehawken, somewhere that is safe and peaceful where nobody can ever hurt her again. She would be so hurt to know he is here, even if he does have the best intentions in the world, to know that he is deliberately putting himself in the line of fire. Philip wants to be someone Ma can always be proud to call her son. He hopes that he is, in spite of all this.

Number three. His second in a different world, his very best friend in every world. He imagines how Angie would roll her eyes as she is so fond of doing when he exasperates her. He pictures just how many poems he’ll need to write to make it up to her when she finds out. His little sister, sweet and innocent though she may appear, is quite as fierce as the aunt she was named for. Philip suddenly wishes he’d seen her this morning before she’d dashed off visiting. He vows to go and fetch her home this evening himself, because there’s nobody he’d rather see. 

Number four. Eacker is staring directly at him; his cold, unblinking eyes seeing right through Philip, so he casts his eyes downwards and tries to occupy himself once more with the thoughts of those he loves. Alexander, Alex as he prefers to be known in an effort, Philip surmises, to distinguish himself from their father. Quiet, studious, hardworking Alex who, even at just fifteen years, Philip can already tell will grow up into a fine young man. Quiet in ways Philip never was and still too serious for his young age, Philip can always make him smile, even just a little, and he makes the mental note to do it more often. 

His hands are still shaking, imperceptibly he hopes, as the count climbs ever higher and he prepares to aim the gun. His father’s instructions echo in his head so loudly he’s almost certain the others must be able to hear them too.

“Summon all the courage you require, then slowly and clearly aim your gun towards the sky.” 

And never has Philip required more courage than he does in this moment, standing there facing Eacker like a man, following Pa’s instructions to the letter. But time is relentless and waits for no man, even a particularly young one who just wants it to slow down and take a break.

Number five. It’s wrong to always think of James and John together when they are their own individual boys, but they are as inseparable as twins and always have been, despite their four-year age difference. It occurs to Philip that he really doesn’t know James and John nearly as well as he ought to, though he loves them dearly of course. He was away at boarding school and then college for his little brothers’ formative years, and only now does he understand how much he’s missed. He wonders, for the briefest of moments, if his father ever shares this thought. 

Number six. They have passed the halfway point now. If Philip ever had any doubt that this is really going to happen, then it has long since been obliterated. The halfway point is now behind them, irretrievably behind them, and the count of ten is clearly upon the horizon now. And so Philip slowly, very slowly, begins to raise his pistol. He looks Eacker in the eye but he must aim higher. Eacker gives absolutely no outward signs of relinquishing or anything other than a remarkably steady hand, so Philip forces his thoughts elsewhere. In the line-up of his family, just the two little ones remain. The little ones who really aren’t so little anymore. William and Elizabeth, who are growing into fine little people all of their own, and who have already experienced so much hardship and upset in their young lives. They do not need their family dragged through anymore scandal and outrage now that they’re becoming more perceptible and understanding of the big, bad world around them. And Philip is going to make quite certain that no little brother of his, or sister for that matter, will ever be dragged into such an affair as this. 

Number seven.

Philip raises his gun again, a little higher now. He might just have let his mind wander, just for a second, to Miss Theodosia Burr – or, more accurately, Mrs Joseph Alston as she is now. Just one brief thought that wouldn’t hurt anybody and that would have been gone by the count of eight.

But the count of eight never comes.

Seven. The count is just reached, the number still hanging in the crisp air between them, when it happens.

Understanding doesn’t set in immediately. For a fraction of a second, Philip simply wonders why there are shouts and yells coming at him from all sides, and why the count goes no higher, why Richard Price is racing towards him, and why Eacker’s gun is smoking. Then his arm falls to his side, limp and useless, and his father’s gun clatters to the ground.

And then Philip Hamilton falls. And then the pain comes, and Philip finally realizes that the harsh scream of pain that rents the air is coming from him. Price reaches him first and it’s his shaking hands that grab him and lower him to the cold ground. There are panicked yells for the doctor to come right now, for God’s sake hurry, and cold hands that press down hard upon his side and a sticky warmth spreading quickly, too quickly, across his shirt. There must be a boat because Philip feels the miserable swaying of the choppy Hudson waters and his head bumps against the wooden bottom and this wasn’t supposed to happen. He fades in and out of sleep, dead tired all of a sudden, when the pain takes over and forces his eyes to roll back into his head. He hears snatches of conversation that don’t make sense, spoken by voices that he knows and yet sound wholly unfamiliar now.

“Of all the cowardly, dishonorable things to do. Firing on the count of seven!”

But that can’t be right, Philip didn’t fire his father’s gun and now he can’t find it and he can’t even feel his arm anymore. This isn’t good. His gun is gone and his arm is gone and this isn’t good. 

“Young Hamilton’s conduct was impeccable. Carried out the entire thing like a true gentleman. His father would be proud; I have no doubt.”

Pa told him to come home as soon as he was done but Philip has the sudden sinking realization that he isn’t going home. He is going to die. He is going to die possibly right here in the grimy bottom of a borrowed boat in bloodstained clothes, away from home and away from his family. He isn’t coming home. This is what prompts the tears which fall thick and fast. That and the hole which seems to have been ripped through his insides.

“You, boy, run straight to General Hamilton’s office in town. Do not dare stop until you get there. Tell him he must come immediately to John Church’s house. His son has been shot.”

His son has been shot. Philip has been shot and he has the horrible suspicion that his father isn’t going to get here in time. His is never going to see his father again. And who will tell his mother? Who will be given the most unfortunate task of going to Eliza Hamilton’s door to tell her that her child is dying? Or dead already. She mightn’t make it in time either, and all Philip wants to do is be a little boy in his mother’s arms again.

He is taken from the boat and cannot suppress the cry that is ripped from him as one of the men accidentally jostles the wound in his side. Young men of nearly twenty years do not cry. He tries to raise a hand to wipe the tears away. Father won’t be proud to see him like this, but his arms are heavy and all he succeeds in doing is weakly swatting at the person closest to him. 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Philip tries to choke out. It’s suddenly exceedingly difficult to talk around the foul tasting blood that fills his mouth, but this is the most important thing he’s ever had to say and someone must pass it on to his parents if the chance is taken from him. They must know that he did everything just right, just as he was supposed to and he never meant for things to turn out the way they have. And that he’s sorry. They must know that, above all else. 

“I know, Phil,” the man is saying and it must be Price because that’s the name all his college friends called him. “I know.” His voice is unbearably sad.

Somehow, Aunt Angelica is there and it is her gentle hands that smooth his sweaty hair off his tear stained face. He must be in her house, though how he got there he cannot say.  
“Save your strength, my dear,” she says quietly, her voice as strong as ever despite the grim situation. “Your father is on his way, and your cousin is going to fetch your mother right this second.”

Everything appears more than a little hazy around the edges, like the world itself is slipping away before Philip’s eyes and he is powerless to stop it. He can just about make out his elder cousin, another Philip after their grandfather, darting out the door. Perhaps by the time the sun goes down this evening, his cousin may be Philip Schuyler’s only namesake left. 

Aunt Angelica pulls up a chair and sits beside him, not leaving his side in the agonizing wait for his parents. It feels like hours and perhaps it is. His aunt grasps his arm so tight it almost hurts and she begs him to keep his eyes open, to stay awake. To stay alive. Philip tries, really he does, but his eyelids are so heavy and it just hurts so much. Aunt Angelica tells him stories to while away the never ending wait. She tells him amusing anecdotes about her childhood in Albany, and in any other situation, he would laugh at the stories she tells about Ma and Aunt Peggy growing up. She describes how, once they were old enough, they would commandeer Grandfather’s carriage and sneak into the city. Pa and his group of friends were always the loudest voices in any room, even then, she recalls with a wry smile. She retells the night that his mother and father met in such vivid detail that Philip thinks Aunt Angelica should be the family poet from now on. Her words transport Philip away from this sick bed, his death bed, and he’s there in the ballroom that fateful winter’s night. The music seems to drift in on the stale air towards him as his aunt’s voice is filled with a deep and powerful nostalgia. Anyone with eyes in their head and a scrap of wit knew that Alexander and Eliza had fallen in love on the spot that night, she tells him. Her words are comforting, like a story before bed, but she is spared having to recount all that came after when the door bursts open and a most familiar voice makes itself heard. 

“Where is my son?”

Philip can’t see him just yet but his father is here, Pa made it in time and he’s talking to the doctor with a panicked frenzy to his voice. Philip didn’t come home. He didn’t make his father proud. He tries to regain some composure, to sit up and dry his eyes, but all he succeeds in doing is jarring his wound. He can’t help but cry out, overwhelmed entirely as the pain makes him double over before cold hands push him back down until he is flat on his back. Then Father is here, standing at the foot of the bed, looking smaller and older somehow. Aunt Angelica springs back at once, but Father doesn’t take her seat. Instead he stands, his face deathly pale and his hands are unsteady and uncertain. For a moment they both look at each other with wide, unblinking eyes before all their resolve comes crashing down to the ground.

“Philip.”

“Pa.”

They speak at the same time, always too alike for their own good, and Alexander Hamilton, Philip can see, is at a total and utter loss as to what to do. He snaps at the doctor and his shaking hands cup Philip’s face and he just doesn’t know what to do. Philip grasps at his father’s sleeve with uncoordinated fingers and tries to pull him closer because he doesn’t think his voice will carry very far.

“I did exactly as you said, Pa,” he says quietly, his voice wavering and his father’s face falls even further.

“I know,” he says, just like Price. “I know, son, I know. Just – just, please save your strength. Please, Philip, please just stay alive.”

Philip has never heard his father sound plaintive, even begging, before now. He takes Philip’s hand between both of his own and clings on for dear life as though he can keep his son tethered to him, to life, if he holds on tight enough. Silence isn’t something either of them are particularly good at, but they sit together quietly; Philip’s deep, labored breaths the only sound in the small room.

“I’m scared,” Philip says, almost without his own volition. He could be a child again; his voice is so timid and small. 

“Don’t be scared,” Pa says at once, though his own voice is filled with undisguised terror. “Don’t be scared, my boy, you are brave and bold and wonderful. You have nothing to fear.”

But Philip can’t help it. He is terrified out of his mind.

“Pa, I’m – I’m sorry,” he says, finding it difficult to talk around the lump in his throat. 

Pa isn’t able to speak for a long moment. His eyes are filled with an emotion Philip has never seen before, perhaps it is anguish, and his shaking hands take Philip’s face again as he presses a kiss to his forehead. “You never need to apologize to me,” he says firmly, even though his voice is thick and heavy. “I should apologize to you, Philip. You did nothing wrong, do you understand? You are a young man of honor and one that I am immensely proud to call my son. I don’t deserve to call a fine boy like you my own, Philip.”

That is enough.

“I love you, Philip, very much and I beg you never to forget that. Not even for the briefest of moments.”

He won’t.

There comes a sound from the vague direction of the doorway; a guttural, visceral cry that is so harsh and horrible Philip cannot believe it comes from his mother. But it does. His poor, long suffering mother whom he swore would never have to take another heartbreak has just been exposed to yet another. She flies into the room like a hurricane, frantic and out of breath, asking panicked questions without waiting to hear the responses. Philip wanted his mother but he cannot bear to see her like this. 

“Is he breathing? Is he going to survive this?” she asks to nobody in particular, ignoring the doctor’s wringing of his hands and Father’s failed attempts at explanations and Aunt Angelica’s attempts to placate her. In this moment, she has eyes only for her eldest child and he has eyes only for her. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again because he has to say it and because there’s nothing else to say.

Her response is almost identical to the one Pa gave earlier. Ma’s voice is equally steady, even as one perfectly formed tear slides off the end of her nose. “Please, my darling, don’t say that. You never need to say sorry. Not to me. Not you, my boy.”

The room all but empties after that and the air grows still and quiet. Aunt Angelica politely excuses herself in an unusual show of less than dignified emotion, imploring them to just shout for her should they need anything, anything at all. The doctor quietly makes himself scarce too, after a whispered set of instructions in Father’s ear. He leaves the room, shaking his head and the inference is clear. His work here is done. Nothing more he can do. Philip won’t be in need of a doctor anymore.

In the end, only the three of them remain, and there they will remain until the very end. Ma, Pa and Philip. Their own little family of three, just in this moment. There was a time, long ago now, when their entire family was just contained in this tiny unit of three, but Philip can’t really remember it, of course. His thoughts will not stay still or settled and so his mind flits quickly to Angie and Alex and the others, because their family is a lot larger than just three now. He wants Angie to roll her eyes at his stupidity and tell him off, and Alex to quietly assess the situation and James to ask enough questions that it all becomes clear and manageable. John would sing loudly in his none too musical voice and William would run around playing chase with them all and little Elizabeth would clamber up onto his lap and throw her arms around his neck. Philip wants them here more than anything, wants this makeshift infirmary filled with the laughter and shouts of his little brothers and sisters, but he knows that just can’t be. 

How can he expect them all to traipse in here, the little ones hand in hand, and see him writhing in unimaginable pain on his death bed in a bloodstained shirt? Philip is supposed to protect them and set them the best example. He is meant to make the world safe and sound for them, and Philip just can’t let them see him like this. He can’t, and it breaks his already heavy heart, and he never wrote a poem for Angie this morning and he hopes she’ll understand why he couldn’t say goodbye.

It won’t be enough. 

Philip can see that now. He can see it even as the light begins to dim and he jerks awake after falling into another fitful sleep. He awakes to find his mother lying beside him, her warm fingers intertwined with his, and his father lying on the other side, pressing down hard upon the gunshot wound with his own handkerchief. Pa must know that his efforts are futile, and that the blood will keep flowing until Philip has no more to give, but he doesn’t falter once. His father has never been known to give up on anything he sets his mind to, and yet it is Philip, once his greatest hope for the future, who will lead him towards failure.

Memories, recollections, figments of his imagination perhaps, flit across his increasingly clouded mind as he fights to stop himself crying out in pain. It is unimaginable and indescribable. Poet he may be but the words are lost to him now; draining away like sand in an hourglass like he never had them at all. He is boiling hot, so hot he fears he will burn here in this bed, and yet he is freezing cold, his teeth chattering so much that blood, more blood, is drawn from his dry lips. If it weren’t for his parents’ hands, Philip thinks he might just drift away, and he clutches hard, because he doesn’t want to leave.

Time doesn’t behave itself anymore. He is here in Aunt Angelica’s house, nineteen years old and bleeding out on her white linen sheets. But he is floating away back to a different time, to his childhood bedroom, because he can remember being ill now. He remembers the headmaster escorting him home from boarding school, remembers Pa blanching and hurrying him upstairs at once and settling him into bed. Ma was upstate visiting Grandfather but she came as soon as she heard, leaving the others in Aunt Angelica’s more than capable hands. And they sat like this, for hours or days or weeks, with Pa administering medicines and cooling his burning forehead with a wet cloth, and Ma holding him, quietly singing songs in his ear. Together they sat, Ma praying, and they waited for the blessed moment when his fever finally broke.

“Don’t tell Angie,” he said then, and perhaps he says it again now. “She’ll only get worried, and make herself sick. Tell her I’m fine.”

The fever doesn’t break now. It rages on and Philip has to work hard just to stay awake, to force himself just to keep breathing in and out. He is fighting a losing battle. He will lose this fight just like he lost the duel. He knows it, and his parents surely must know it too. His mother speaks gently to him now; she shares memories and stories with him in a slightly trembling voice as Father increases his administrations with an almost furious fervor.

“Do you remember your ninth birthday, Pip?” she asks, reverting to the childhood pet name she hasn’t used in years. “Do you remember how we played the piano together?”

“I would always change the line,” Philip replies so quietly he is almost inaudible.

Ma makes a choked sort of noise midway between a laugh and a sob. “You always made the line better,” she corrects him. “I much prefer your renditions to mine.”

“My son, fluent in French and Latin by nine years old,” Pa comments, a clear note of pride in his voice despite all that has happened. “Burr used to insist that his girl was just the same, but he never convinced me. You are one of a kind, my boy.”

“Do you remember your ninth birthday?” Ma presses on. “I would insist you recite your poem from that day every year. My favorite poem you ever wrote and you were just a little boy.”

“Your name is Philip,” Pa begins. He remembers it, even after all these years.

“You are a poet,” Ma continues, smiling a little shakily.

“I…I wrote this…this poem just to sh-show it,” Philip begins before his breath falters and he cannot go on. The words won’t, can’t, come. There is no beat, no melody. No rhyme, no reason, no rhythm. Just a long, lingering breath that shudders and fails, and he can already hear the terrible cry Ma lets out and feel her warm weight as she falls against him. His last poem is cut short, the line left hanging in the air for someone, anyone, to fill in the rest. To finish the poem he has worked on all his life but can never complete. A great unfinished symphony never destined to reach its full potential or completion. 

His name was Philip. He was a poet.

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by both Hamilton: An American Musical as well as actual historical accounts. This came about by listening to Dear Theodosia too many times, as well as reading Chernow and discovering that Alexander and Eliza really did lie on each side of Philip as he died. What else was I supposed to do with such information? Throw in that Angelica Hamilton never was the same after the death of her brother, and here we have it. Any song lyrics you recognise belong very firmly to Lin-Manuel Miranda.


End file.
